Custom keyboard shortcut key not working properly

I assigned a new shortcut on desktop to shutdown my pc and assigned a keyboad shortcut ctrl + alt + f12. The shortcut always works properly if i double click on the shortcut icon but doesn't always work when pressing ctrl+alt+f12. Can someone explain why is this happening ?

Hello gidra,

Welcome to Seven Forums.

Not sure. First thought is that some app. you have running may be interfering. Do you have other shortcuts on the desktop with keyboard shortcuts? Do they always work? When the shutdown doesn't work, try one of the others to see if it's working.

Hope this helps.

Gary

thanks for your reply gary. I tried to mess with other shortcuts but the symptoms are still persisting. It doesn't seem to be a shutdown keyboard shortcut related issue only. The strange thing is that when I'm double clicking on them or as soon as I create them the hotkeys work properly. All of a sudden the won't work any more, I delete them and create them once more and they function properly again

If you log off and back on or do a restart, do they work again?

Try opening 'Event Viewer' (WinLogo key > type: event > hit enter). See if anything in there gives a hint.

No the ain't working on the restart/log off. I opened event viewer, what should I be looking for over here ?

Sorry to take so long. You would be looking for something that is happening whenever you loose the ability to use your keyboard shortcuts. Don't know what exactly that might be. It will be something that keeps repeating itself. Might be that you have to check it several times when the shortcuts stop working to see what the common denominator might be.

Created an account on these forums for this specific issue. This is the only site that mentions it that I can find on Google.

I'm currently trying to create shortcuts to logoff and reboot the system so I can assign keyboard shortcuts (custom ones). On WinXP we had no issue with this and had CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+L logoff the user and CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+R reboot the system after 10 seconds. Trying to duplicate this with Win7 currently.

I have the shortcuts created and they work when I double click them. I should note that Microsoft's support site claims you can't use CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+<random key> as a custom shortcut but in reality you can and it still works. Because I thought perhaps this was the issue however I am currently trying to get these to work with CTRL+ALT+L and CTRL+ALT+R.

The reason its important for the keyboard shortcuts to work (aside from the fact they should!) as the actual shortcut (the .lnk file) will be hidden so that the guest user can't see the file.

So far I have not found anything in Event Viewer to suggest anything is interfering. The shortcuts will work fine when they are initially created, and usually seem fine after a reboot even. Randomly the keyboard shortcut will stop working even though it is still set. So far the only way to get it to work again has been to double click the shortcut. When the shortcut is hidden we won't be able to do that though so we need to find out why this is even happening.

I'm going to keep working on it but if anyone can suggest anything at all as to what would be causing the custom keyboard shortcuts to randomly stop working it would be appreciated!

Cowmonaut,

I too found this to be the first post that speaks of exactly what I'm experiencing with shortcut keys not working. Here's what I have noticed thus far:

I can remove the key combo and click save then re-enter the combo or remove and recreate the shortcut altogether and they will work just fine. However what I have noticed is the problem is present when I reboot the OS as they no longer work after that event. The shortcut itself works fine when double clicking it however the shortcut key strokes no longer work. I was really looking forward to this feature based on the increased efficiecy.

I will keep looking to see if I or someone else can figure this out then post back here. I probably need to rely on someone elses fix that know a little more about the inner workings of Win 7.

Thanks
Mediator

After doing more research on this issue I have done this:

Created a clean boot state using msconfig by unchecking the box that says load startup items just to eliminate a program that might be causing this issue but that did not work.

I have my office computer here at the house right now so I went ahead and upgraded it to Win 7 from Vista. I noticed I had the same issue on this computer as the home computer.

I then created another admin user account and created the exact same 2 shortcuts with the exact same shortcut keys using CTRL ALT Num(x). It worked perfectly.... even on reboot several times it works. I have no idea why it will not work on the main user account. I guess until I figure out the issue I will transfer my files to the new user account seeing that something is a miss in the old account.

Another note: On the office computer it was just an upgrade but on the home computer it was a complete new format so that can be eliminated as a possible issue.

I would like to know if one of you guys having the same issue can resolve this by using a different user account as I did.

Mediator said:

After doing more research on this issue I have done this:

Another note: On the office computer it was just an upgrade but on the home computer it was a complete new format so that can be eliminated as a possible issue.

I would like to know if one of you guys having the same issue can resolve this by using a different user account as I did.

Click to expand...

Same issue here - different user account or not.

Brand new system build, clean install of Win7 Pro. I used a bunch of these types of custom keyboard shortcuts on XP (to open apps, folders, frequently accessed documents), and they always worked. Now, I create them, and they work at first, and usually right after a reboot, but if the system is up for a while, they seem to stop working.

The weird thing is, not all of them stop working, and not always the same ones stop working. I can't see any pattern to it. It seems completely random. It's quite annoying to say the least.

I have some of the shortcuts "pinned" to the start menu, and some are hidden files/folders on the desktop. Some are activated with SHIFT+CTRL+ALT+, others with just CTRL+ALT+. I just changed them all to CTRL+ALT+ to see if that makes a difference. I'll let you know... :sarc:

My Solution ...

I had the same problem. Here's what worked for me:

The issue seems to be that Windows won't look just anywhere for shortcut files when it is restoring hotkey (shortcut key) assignments after login. It DOES seem to look in the Start Menu for these. So I created a folder called C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\_hotkeys

Hotkey assignments within shortcuts in there are remembered/restored at next login.

Hope that works for you!

David thanks for the post.... I will try putting them in a folder like you mentioned in the start menu. Thanks again. If this works for me I will put this fix in another forum I was posting in too. Thanks again.

EDIT:

This worked for me too David. What I found to be the problem before was windows wouldn't read the hotkeys unless they were on the desktop. I'm gald you found this little fix....

David Wilhite said:

I had the same problem. Here's what worked for me:

The issue seems to be that Windows won't look just anywhere for shortcut files when it is restoring hotkey (shortcut key) assignments after login. It DOES seem to look in the Start Menu for these. So I created a folder called C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\_hotkeys

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, that method only works for program and file shortcuts, not for FOLDERS.

When you add a shortcut TO A FOLDER to "_hotkeys", the "Shortcut" tab is not in the properties box of that FOLDER, so no Shortcut Key can be assigned (unlike when a shortcut to a FOLDER is placed on the desktop, where that tab is available).

I have several frequently accessed folders on different partitions that I enjoyed the quick access to (back on XP). I suppose my only option is to place FOLDER shortcuts on the desktop, but the Shortcut Key function is unreliable that way.

Any other ideas for FOLDERS?

OK, I figured it out. If you use the "Create New Shortcut" right click context menu, within the "_hotkeys" folder, then point that shortcut to the folder you want, you can set the Shortcut Key. And so far, it's working.

I'm sorry I should have come back here to reply before.

The solution we used was to place the shortcuts in "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories". We hide access to All Programs in the Start Menu anyways so it worked well enough for us.

Hi all, I'm having a very similar problem. I created a shortcut for Flip 3d and placed it on the desktop.

(To save confusion, the reason I had created a shortcut for Flip 3d is because I have a mouse that allows me to program macros. Programming the standard Flip 3d shortcut of 'Windows key + Tab' into the macro proved to be useless as the stack of documents would just continuously scroll).

Next, I set a keyboard shortcut of 'Ctrl + Alt + N' in the properties of the Flip 3d shortcut, and programmed my macro key for that same key combination. It worked great, but only for a short period of time. Once it stopped working, the only way I could get it to work again was by rebooting my system. Then it would only work for a short while, and then break again. I've tried this many times while using the actual key strokes as opposed to the macro to no avail. I get the same results either way.

I tried moving the shortcut to this folder C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\_hotkeys, however I am experiencing the same result. It works at first, but then stops working until I reboot, then it works fine again.

Can anybody tell me why the keyboard shortcut only works for a short while? Is there a keyboard shortcut that doesn't break (that isn't being used already)?

Thanks

I think I may have found a solution, or at least the cause of the Flip 3d shortcut breaking. Because I have it set to a macro, when Flip 3d is launched sometimes I mistakenly press the macro key a second time. It seems that when the key combination Ctrl + Alt + N is pressed a second time after the program has launched (and only when the program is still active), the shortcut doesn't work again until the system reboots. I hope this helps anyone else who has this issue.

Clear as Mudd

bigjonstudd1 said:

I think I may have found a solution, or at least the cause of the Flip 3d shortcut breaking. Because I have it set to a macro, when Flip 3d is launched sometimes I mistakenly press the macro key a second time. It seems that when the key combination Ctrl + Alt + N is pressed a second time after the program has launched (and only when the program is still active), the shortcut doesn't work again until the system reboots. I hope this helps anyone else who has this issue.

Click to expand...

The behavior of subsequent shortcut key presses for an already-running application seems to be dependent on the application itself. I suspect Windows generates some particular Event that the application can handle (or ignore) as it is programmed.

Some applications will ignore it (e.g. Calc), some will open additional instances (e.g. Firefox), some will just give focus to the already running process (e.g. Notepad).

Start menu settings effect shortcut persistence

After dogging this same problem for hours it appears that in Windows 7 "Store and display recently opened programs in the Start menu" needs to be enable (checked) for shortcuts to persist across logoff/logon events.

Reference this post for more information

Windows 7 - Custom keyboard shortcut key not working properly [SOLVED] - [H]ard|Forum

Enabling this setting cleared the problems while all other suggested remedies did not.

David Wilhite said:

I had the same problem. Here's what worked for me:

The issue seems to be that Windows won't look just anywhere for shortcut files when it is restoring hotkey (shortcut key) assignments after login. It DOES seem to look in the Start Menu for these. So I created a folder called C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\_hotkeys

Hotkey assignments within shortcuts in there are remembered/restored at next login.

Hope that works for you!

Click to expand...

This work like a charm David, Thank You!